The Boston Globe found that in America’s college capital, illegally overcrowded student apartments owned by profit-driven landlords are rampant, placing the health and safety of thousands of undergraduates at risk while city officials did nothing to respond to this lawless behavior.
The Miami Herald examined how more than 500 children died of abuse or neglect over a seven-year period after falling through Florida’s child welfare safety net, largely as a result of a misguided effort to reduce the number of foster children while simultaneously slashing services for troubled families. The series prompted immediate reforms, including the most far-reaching overhaul of child welfare laws in Florida’s history.
The Reuters series, “Unaccountable,” by Scot Paltrow and Kelly Carr, exposed widespread accounting malpractice at the Defense Department and explains the human and economic costs of Pentagon accounting flaws.
In his series, Michael M. Phillips detailed how the U.S. Veterans Administration lobotomized more than 2,000 mentally troubled troops after World War II. Using documents the government didn’t know it had about a shocking medical practice it didn’t remember performing, the articles challenged the deeply held myth that the Greatest Generation came through war emotionally unscathed.
The Journal Sentinel’s groundbreaking investigation found that thousands of hospitals — and dozens of state agencies that oversee the nation’s newborn screening programs — are failing America’s babies and parents due to an ineffective and unaccountable system. In a first-ever data analysis, the investigation revealed that each year hundreds of thousands of blood samples arrive late at labs across the country—in some cases because they were held and “batched” to save a few dollars in postage—putting babies at risk of disability and death.
Miami New Times’ year-long series on doping and so-called “anti-aging” clinics resulted directly in suspension of 13 players, including a record 162 games for Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. It was the largest round of such discipline in the history of American sport. The series also revealed systemic failure in Florida that allowed felons to own clinics like Biogenesis employing physicians with long disciplinary histories to sell federally restricted drugs such as steroids, testosterone and human growth hormone. The New Times probe forced baseball to confront its doping problems and the state to move toward policing its clinics.
In an unprecedented media collaboration that spanned two languages, television, radio and print, “Rape in the Fields/Violación de un Sueño” uncovered pervasive sexual assault against immigrant women working in the agriculture industry. As a result of the report and the national discussion it spurred, local rape crisis centers are doing outreach to farm workers, district attorneys are beginning to file criminal charges against perpetrators, and state officials are drafting legislation to combat this widespread sexual abuse.
Based on more than 2.5 million leaked files, this 50-article, world-wide investigative project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington involved 112 journalists and 42 media partners in 58 countries. It took more than 18 months of challenging and risky work to reveal more than 120,000 names and companies in a secret parallel economy of offshore tax havens that benefit the few at the expense of the many. The stories prompted international tax investigations, led by the IRS, in partnership with UK and Australian tax authorities.
A year-long investigation by The Center for Public Integrity, in partnership with the ABC News Brian Ross investigative unit, examined how doctors and lawyers, working at the behest of the coal industry, helped defeat benefit claims of coal miners who were sick and dying of black lung disease. The team explored thousands of previously classified legal filings and created an original database of medical evidence that showed how prominent lawyers withheld key evidence and doctors at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, hired by the coal industry, consistently denied the existence of advanced black lung on X-rays. Following the online and network news reports, Johns Hopkins suspended its black lung program, U.S. senators began crafting reform legislation and members of Congress called for a federal investigation.
David Barstow demonstrated that Wal-Mart’s conquest of Mexico was built on a foundation of corruption and revealed how top executives feared exposure and made attempts to keep their practices in the dark. As a result of this series, the Justice Department and the SEC are investigating for violations of the federal anti-bribery law. Wal-Mart has also overhauled its compliance and investigation protocols.